NFR Project: 'It Happened One Night' (1934)

 

NFR Project: ‘It Happened One Night’

Dir: Frank Capra

Scr: Robert Riskin

Pho: Joseph Walker

Ed: Gene Havlick

Premiere: Feb. 22, 1934

105 min.

One of the best of all American films, It Happened One Night is a perfect little movie that sparked an entire genre – the screwball comedy.

It was the work of one of the country’s most distinctive directors, Frank Capra. He had gotten his start in the silent era, writing gags for Mack Sennett before graduating to directing, contributing mightily to the reputation of silent comedian Harry Langdon. He kept plugging away through the early sound era, helming a variety of projects until he hit his stride with this unique “Capraesque” film.

The qualities of the essential Capra film – the glorification of anti-materialism, democratic values, common sense, harmless idiosyncrasy, and good humor – come in large part from Capra’s collaboration with screenwriter Robert Riskin, who penned eight of his films. This was their first work together. Riskin’s script is a classic. He develops his characters with ease, and soon has them bickering and cooing with each other – mostly bickering.

Claudette Colbert plays a spoiled rich girl, Ellen Andrews, who runs away from her father to be with the man she married, against her father’s wishes. She tries to make her way from Miami to New York without being picked up by her father’s agents. She runs into an impetuous reporter Peter Wanre, played by Clark Gable, who soon figures out who she is (her story is a front-page one) and determines to get her to New York in exchange for the exclusive story.

What follows is a modern version of The Taming of the Shrew, in which Gable teaches Colbert how to be a normal, everyday type of person . . . while Colbert consistently deflates Gable’s ego. Naturally, the two, reluctantly, fall for each other. Riskin skillfully plays with exasperation and attraction, keeping the duo and the audience up in the air and interested in seeing what happens next.

The screwball comedy would follow this pattern. One part of a romantic couple is too serious, or stuck up, to make the connection with the desired mate. That mate wears down their resistance through a series of increasingly outrageous experiences until the object of affection succumbs to both the mate and to a more forgiving (and daffy) style of life.

What Capra gives us, uniquely, is a vision of America that we like. It’s filled with nuts, spoilsports, visionaries, cynics, all entertaining. A great deal of the movie takes place on a cross-country bus ride, and in that bus is a cross-section of America. Capra even takes the time to film the communal singing of all three verses of “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.” As the bus careens through the night, it sways with the passengers, who sing lustily together, in happiness and harmony despite their respective journeys. It’s a perfect little moment. We’re not so bad, us regular folks.

Colbert and Gable have great chemistry together, and the movie just feeds off that. Look for character actor Roscoe Karns as the unsavory Oscar Shapely, who hits on Colbert, then discovers her secret and has to be gotten out of the way by a tough-talking Gable. Walter Connolly is on hand as Colbert’s long-suffering father.

The film was the first, and only one of three, films to win all the major Oscar categories – Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay. It earned them. Capra has a way of bucking us up. Of making films that lift our spirits.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: It’s a Gift.